Users of the Internet are frequently presented with display advertisements within web pages. These advertisements may be in the form of banner advertisements, pop up ads, pop under ads, or other static or dynamic display advertisements within (or associated with) a web publisher's web site.
The goal of each of these advertisements is to entice the user to link to the advertiser's web site for additional information and/or ultimately to solicit the sale of a product or service to the user. As such, displayed advertisements may be associated with a link such that if the advertisement is clicked, the user's web browser is redirected to the advertiser's designated web page.
Because of the above described dynamics of Internet advertising, certain terminology has evolved in the Internet advertising industry. For example: i) the event of rendering an advertisement to an end user within a web publisher's web site is generally referred to as an advertisement “impression”; ii) the event of a user selecting an advertisement, or clicking on the advertisement, such that his/her browser is redirected to the advertiser's website is generally referred to as a “click” or “click-through”; iii) web publishers may be referred to as publishers of advertisement space, publishers of Internet traffic, or publishers; iv) advertisers may be referred to as buyers; v) the quantity of impressions that a web publisher is able to deliver during a period of time may be referred to as its inventory or inventory of Internet traffic, or traffic available for buyers to purchase; and vi) the distinct portions of a web publisher's inventory that can be delivered to end users distinguishable based on end user attributes such as geography, demographics, and/or behavioral patterns may be referred to as segmented inventory, traffic segments, or targeted traffic.
For example, a web publisher which has traffic of 10,000 “hits” per day has the ability to deliver 10,000 banner advertisements per day. Therefore the publisher has an inventory of 10,000 banner advertisement impressions per day which can be sold.
Further, if the impression is delivered on a web page where user registration is required to access the web page, and such registration requires the user to disclose his/her gender, then the inventory of 10,000 banner advertisements can be segmented into a male segment and a female segment. If, on average, the 10,000 hits are 50% male and 50% female, the publisher has segmented inventory of 5,000 banner advertisement impressions per day as its male traffic segment and 5,000 banner advertisement impressions per day as its female traffic segment.
Website publishers generally sell their inventory utilizing one of two dominant business models. The first dominant business model includes use of a continuous auction system. More specifically, an available impression may be sold via the continuous auction system to the advertiser offering the highest yielding advertisement (e.g. the highest remuneration expected to be received for the impression) at the time that the impression is to be rendered to the end user viewing the publisher's web page.
A continuous auction system may categorize the web sites of several publishers within a topical category using key words for purposes of defining available inventory associated with such topic. Advertisers would then place bids associated with such topic (i.e. bids associated with key words). As such, so long as the advertiser remains the highest bidder for such topical category, its advertisement content will be rendered over that of other advertisers placing lower bids.
The second dominant business model includes the negotiated purchase of blocks of inventory between publishers and advertisers. In one aspect the negotiated purchase may be led by a buyer initiating a request for proposal (RFP) outlining overall objectives of an advertising campaign. Publishers having available inventory meeting the overall objectives can then respond for purposes of commencing negotiation. In another aspect a publisher, typically a publisher of a well known website with significant inventory may have dedicated staff for soliciting buyers of advertisement inventory.
There exist several benefits of the negotiated purchase over the sale via an ad network. One of those benefits is that a negotiation purchase provides for delivery of a set quantity of impressions, clicks, or other saleable events within a certain time frame and for a certain monetary fee. This provides predictability to both the publisher and the advertiser. Because ad networks often operate in an auction environment that is continuous, there is little predictability as to the quantity of impressions that will be delivered, or the price for each impression. Bids may change at any time.
A second benefit is that blocks of segmented inventory sold through negotiated purchase may result in delivery of impressions on a more targeted basis. This results in a buyer being able to acquire more targeted inventory and the publisher realizing more value for its inventory.
On the other hand, some disadvantages of the negotiated process include the fact that the entire process is very time consuming and labor intensive process for all parties. Because of this, it may not be possible for publishers with limited inventory to use the negotiated purchase process in a cost effective manner.
In view of the foregoing, what is needed is a network based system which facilitates and automates the negotiated purchase process. More specifically, what is needed is a network based system and method for brokering, between each publisher of a group of publishers and each advertiser of a group of advertisers, the sale of at least a portion of each publisher's inventory of advertisement impressions that the publisher can render within renderings of the publisher's Internet web pages to end users accessing such web pages.
Further yet, it is recognized that large and sometimes well known publishers often experience a demand for impressions from buyers/advertisers that exceed the quantity of inventory impressions that the publisher has available. Therefore, it is useful for the networked based system to facilitate development of a dynamic network of publishers for purposes of building inventory of discreet traffic blocks of segmented ad placements of multiple sellers with related content and/or similar end user attribute profiles and to facilitate sales of inventory across such segmented add placement by a network operator utilizing a negotiated purchase process.